Girl Days

When Mimi was born we kept Delma in daycare fulltime for a few weeks, so I could have time to figure out what the hell to do with a baby again before juggling both kids by myself. A few weeks ago we changed the schedule to Delly in daycare on Mondays and Thursdays, and home with Mimi and me on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We call them our "Girl Days."

Some days there's more TV than I'd like, and on girl days I rarely manage to get any chores done. I expected Delly to have little-to-no patience when I had to tend to Mimi's needs before her own needs or wants. And she has certainly pitched some fits, and they are getting more frequent as Mimi becomes more high-maintenance, but for the most part she's been unexpectedly good. I was braced for each day being one battle after another, being completely stressed out and was planning to have to find things to keep her busy all day just to keep her out of my hair. What I didn't expect was to really have fun. I didn't expect feeling very proud of myself on those days when I can keep both of girls mostly happy and can also get work done around the house, and get us out of the house to run errands or do fun things. It's so simple, and kajillions of other parents do this, but it still feels like such an accomplishment to me. And a wonderful product of this new arrangement is that Delly become more Mommy-centric than ever. She's generally either shown no preference for either Josh or me, or occasionally prefers her Daddy. But she almost never purposefully picked me over him. Now she does, and often when he comes home at the end of the day it takes her a while to warm up to him. I feel like such a MOM. It's very satisfying, and I love it.

Our girl days are very challenging, and usually leave me shot by the time Josh comes home, but I really am so happy to have this precious time home with my daughters. Even though the second Mimi starts screaming I start counting the minutes til I return to work. We've been going back and forth about the possibility of hiring a house cleaner. Part of me feels like, what a waste when I'm home every day. But when I have a little time when the girls are napping or occupied or when they're with Josh, the last thing I want to do is clean floors. But I'm more and more feeling like it may very well be worth the cost.

I don't want to look back at this brief period of time and regret that I didn't make more of an effort to really enjoy it. When will I ever get months of time at home again?? I don't want to waste it making myself more stressed than I need to if I can avoid it. Plus, I want time to sew more clothes for my girlies! More on that in another post...